It is very amusing to assist at the acts of repulsion and of exorcism, which a man like the Abbé Galiani believes himself obliged to make in his treatise Dei doveri dei principi neutrali (1782). When, having amply discussed this matter from the point of view of morality, he goes on to discuss it from the point of view of politics and of the reason of State, he despatches it in a few pages, abhorring, as he says, that "insidious and wicked science" which formed "the delight, first of Italian and then of almost all European minds of the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries." He protests at every step that he is "tired of repeating and of developing teachings of cunning and wickedness." But what the Abbot Galiani really abhorred was the robed scholastic treatment of a matter that he who was termed Machiavellino by his French friends, and declared that he did not admit in politics anything but le machiavélisme pur, sans mélange, cru, vert, dans toute son âpreté,[3] handled with very different ability and elegance in his conversations in Parisian salons and in his witty letters to Madame d'Épinay. The rules of the eighteenth century are to be sought in the speeches, essays, political opuscules, tragedies, plays dealing with the life of citizens, fiction, history, and books of memoirs. If Aretino and Piccolomini provided for the necessities of the respectable courtesans and procuresses of the Cinquecento, in the Settecento, Giacomo Casanova constructed the type of the perfect adventurer. He began with the rules to be followed as a system of life, the se laisser aller au gré du vent qui pousse, and passed to those that were more special and yet fundamental, such as that one should have no scruples de tromper des étourdis, des fripons et des sots, because they défient l'esprit and on venge l'esprit quand on trompe un sot. There should be still less scruple in deception in affairs of love, for, pour ce qui regarde les femmes, ce sont des tromperies réciproques, qu'on ne met pas en ligne de compte; car, quand l'amour s'en mêle, on est ordinairement dupe de part et d'autre.[4] Let us leave to the reader to investigate, if he please, the rules of life that are concealed beneath the most modern forms of literature; these are a continuous, if not always beneficent, guide for daily life.
Relation between the arts (collections of rules) and philosophical doctrines.
Another circumstance that has led to the belief in the disappearance of books of rules is the observation that from those books dealing with the so-called arts, there has come to be a treatment of the philosophy of their subject-matter, in which those treatises have been dissolved. Thus from Poetics and Rhetorics has come Æsthetic, from Grammatic the Philosophy of language, from the Art of teaching and of reasoning Logic and Gnoseology, from the historical Art, Historic, from the Arts of economic government, the Science of Economy, from the treatises on Natural Law, the Philosophy of Law.
When such philosophies, then, had appeared, treatises upon the Arts seemed to have become superfluous, and to this is attributed the cause of their diminution or disappearance. But although it be impossible not to recognize the historical process above described from books on the arts to books of systems, it is necessary to be careful to interpret it exactly and not to confuse it with a passing from empiria to philosophy. Thus it will be seen that the part absorbed and dissolved in philosophy has been precisely those philosophical attempts that were mingled with such collections of rules and precepts. For it was very natural that the writers who put them together and had ideas as to what should be done and what avoided, were often led to investigate the principles from which sprung the particular rules. Believing that they were strengthening, they really came to surpass them, that is, they passed unwittingly from one form of treatment to another, from Psychology to Philosophy. But not even here has empiricism been refined into philosophy (a refinement which, strictly speaking, is impossible), but a more perfect philosophy has been substituted for one less perfect. The dissolution, then, has not been of the rules, but of that imperfect philosophy, a chemical process which has left the rules in what they possess of original as residuum. Hence their persistence, and indeed the impossibility that they should not persist, side by side with the most pure and perfect of philosophies.
Casuistic: its nature and utility.
Casuistic has had the same fate as the rules, and was also at one time responsible for a very copious literary production. Now it is cultivated as literature only by a few Jesuits, who carry on the glories of Escobar and of Sanchez, read only by priests preparing themselves for the post of confessor, whose studies are based for the most part upon old books (such as the Theologia moralis of the Neapolitan Sant' Alfonso de' Liguori). At one time Casuistic was not confined only to profane or theological morality, to the casus conscientiae. There were also books of casuistry composed for all aspects of life, for politics, for the life of the courtier ("the Wise Man at Court"), for the art of love. When the literary form of rules fell into discredit, that of Casuistic fell with it. But this does not mean that it is dead; it lives and will live as long as rules live. For Casuistic is nothing but the process of reasoning by which rules are made always more precise, passing from more general cases to those more particular, so that no one will ever be able to do without them.—If we take for rule of life this maxim: to avoid scientific polemics, because they constitute a waste of time, adding little to the progress of knowledge; in what way must we behave if a polemic be such that it enables us to gain on the one hand the time it makes us lose on the other? Shall we maintain the general rule, or shall we waive it on this occasion, if for no other reason than to give variety to our occupations? And how shall we behave if not only we retrieve the time lost but avoid losing more time in the future? Shall we wish to enter upon the polemic at once? But if our future be looked upon as uncertain, if we be far advanced in years or in bad health, will it not be better to renounce the uncertain gain of the future for the certain gain of the present?—This is a very simple example of Casuistic, which a critic and writer (let us suppose that he is the writer of these pages) is obliged to propose to himself and to solve. Naturally, no Casuistic will ever furnish the concrete solution (which is the only one that counts), since, as has been said, no rule can ever furnish it. Rules and casuistry do not reach the individuality omnimodo determinata, which is the historical situation; yet if Casuistic aid my action, this will always differ from that, as concrete from abstract; or better, my action will always truly possess the form, the definiteness that abstract casuistry cannot possess. Woe to practical men who rely upon collections of maxims and casuistical reasonings, and woe to those who rely upon them. Those who argue at length upon practical matters and draw subtle distinctions, are to be avoided in the world of affairs and in the world of action. If they have not yet provoked some disaster, they are on the road to doing so now. This, at least, is a good rule; like the supreme rule (which is not a rule but philosophical truth), namely, that we must abandon rules, that is, face the individual case, which, as such, is always irregular.
Jurisprudence as casuistry.
But if a further proof be wanted of the necessity and perpetuity of maxims and of casuistry, observe how these also persist in literary form, as laws, where this form is not eliminable. Laws, as we have seen, are not simple rules, but are based upon formulæ of rules, and must of necessity make explicit in them decisions as to doing and not doing. Jurisprudence is the Casuistic of law, or all the labour of so-called interpretation, which is at bottom the excogitation of new rules. All know that not only is Jurisprudence not of itself legislative, but that it cannot even determine the volitional act of the Statesman, nor the sentence, or decision upon the particular case, a decision which the judge creates upon each occasion. But no one would seriously think of suppressing the work and the function of those casuists, or judicial experts, a function which, since it has always existed and continues to exist, cannot but answer to a social need. It is possible to predict a form of social life, less complicated and weighty, in which that function would have less scope, but whatever be the case as regards this prediction, the casuistry of judicial experts will continue so long as there are laws and rules, that is to say, always.
[1] Ricordi politici e civili, n. xliv. (in Opere inedite(2), Firenze, 1857; p. 97).